first do no harm

First do no harm.

This is a latin principle historically taught to physicians. In the past I have been attracted to the gentleness of this phrase, and empowered to refuse treatment which I deem more destructive than beneficial. But it was recently that I decided to adopt it as my favourite maxim.

It was a bad day, a day where the fatigue and pain were severely interrupting my usually-manageable activities. The old record began to whine in my mind, with belligerence. ‘I can’t believe I can’t get anything done, what a waste of existence.’ ‘Just make yourself. You’re lazy which is why you think you’re unwell, and you could get up if you tried harder.’ Long was the day, loud was the disappointment, strong was the discontent. To soothe the pain and the unjust reprimands, I sought comfort in the form of hair pulling. Much later, Ben walked in to a pile of hair, and a rocking, sobbing, sadness.

In the end, I wasn’t as distressed by my sickness as by the way I had handled it. I deeply regretted that I had turned on myself {and my extremely undeserving head} and multiplied my woes.

By providence, my friend sent me a long email filled with love and too much wisdom to write here.

She wrote:

Please extend to yourself the same kindness you extend to me. You will find that you are the most gracious, considerate, strong, interesting and wonderful person you could ever want to meet.

I shudder to use those adjectives for myself, but the first line was startling.

What if, when I was hurting, or disappointed, or anxious, what if I played an empathetic track? 

Opportunity for practice soon presented itself, bien sur, and I was facing a day where I would be alone and mostly couch bound. It was a little strange to extend compassion, and I felt like a positive psychology experiment.

I found myself walking up a long hill, feeling dizzy after many vials of blood had been extracted from me. I noted that it was a great feat to have gotten my blood tests done on such a challenging day, and that I could enjoy tea when I got home. I lay on the couch, and thought: I’m not lazy nor a hypochondriac. No one feeling this way could move, let alone work. I’ll know without a doubt when I’m feeling well, and I’ll do good things that day. I thought about John Milton’s poem, the line, ‘He also serves who only stands and waits.’ I acknowledged that I was doing well with no pain relief.

Late afternoon the sun eventually beat the clouds, so I went to bask in it and celebrate making it through the bulk of the day, with all hair intact, and lack of agitation. Ben walked in the door, and I was doing some plies and fondues in the sunshine. Same headache, same malaise, same lack of achievement as the other day – but this time, there was no trail of destruction. I hadn’t done what I wanted to, but first, I had done no harm. That night, I was UTTERLY content in having just lived through the day.

Why do we kick ourselves when we’re down? First, do no harm. 

found

thirteen things i do to stay okay

Facebook is not a good place to linger. It’s nice to share in people’s joys as they display their highlights reel, but the second thought after joy for them is, ‘but what about me?! Why have I not been in a photo shoot, graduated, got pregnant, made something original, been to europe or thought of something funny to say?” This addiction ends in greater sadness at my own lot. 

Sunshine is an antidepressant

Crying is an anti depressant

Tea is an anti depressant

Antidepressants (the official kind) can be wonderful and terrible, but it is not embarrassing to be on them. Nor is it embarrassing to sit in the office of a psychiatrist and fight back tears while you tell him that you are scared of holding cups in case you drop them. The mind is complex, and it’s ok for it to get sick, just like your body.

If you find a nice medic, don’t move away or let them retire. If you find a nasty one, cry a bit and get the courage to disengage them.

You can be happy even when your health gives way and your dreams are put aside. You can’t be happy if you hold onto the way you thought things would go. You actually have to surrender, maybe multiple times a day if you’re like me.

Do whatever you need to do to make life manageable. Dare to be unlike those around you and dare to be unashamed. 

Young marriage may seem like a horrifying idea to the majority, but the joy I get from knowing that we are stable when the rest of my life isn’t is indescribable. For me there was nothing more beautiful than the guy I love wanting to commit himself to me, despite my lack of health, career or certain future. I am slightly scarred from all the comments about how we’re still babies, but I’m getting over them.

On that note, lots of people will say/do lots of unkind things to you in your life. Or stupid insensitive things. The longer you are alive and the more comments you hear, the stronger and more bullet proof you become. Crying, again, is reccomended for a short spell. {ps. one benefit of an unpopular blog is lack of mean comments.}

  

Being at home all day long makes you want a baby desperately, despite physical limitations. Try to be uncommonly rational in this situation (picture babies crying at 2 am) and get a dog or cat if you are struggling.

Things can be true even if you do not understand them. I think my life is valuable even though i stay in the lounge on the couch most of the time. I think I could get better, despite not knowing how.

Every single day, God gives new mercies. Don’t worry if you are empty the night before, because they don’t come till morning. 

waking up and getting out of the house

Found

I had one of those days where lifting the cup to my mouth was hard work. Where the question was shall I wipe down the filthy bench, or get in the washing so it doesn’t get wet for the 3^rd time? Forget about flute practice, that heavy piece of silver can stay sparkling on its peg.

Instead I took a trip down memory lane, as you often do when you have hours of you + silence. When you are occupied, you don’t have to do very much of this thinking thing. In a very odd way, it was good to have such a physically low day {though, can we just keep it at one?} because it reminded me of how I used to feel and what I have forgotten. The very things that I want to always remember, and never take for granted, I forget. Memories fade in time, especially if you don’t recall them often. I didn’t think they could, but they do.

I have discovered that as life gets easier, I become unsatisfied with the things in my better life. My daily struggles are milder than they were, but still with me all the time – and so I focus on those milder struggles, and though they are lesser, they preoccupy me just as the greater ones did. That’s why the healthiest individual with no want for income or work can be miserable, because you can always find something to be unhappy about. That’s why someone whose life is easier than mine can  still find it incredibly hard. I am definitely not unhappy (infact, I think I’m the happiest I’ve ever been) and I feel grateful most days for the progress I’ve made, but my gratefulness has become less sharp – my appreciation for small mercies is not as heartfelt as it first was. I don’t celebrate as I do the dishes anymore, or smile as I lift my hands to wash my hair, and drive the car. I don’t even remember as I wash my hair that I didn’t used to able to. I remember the migraines I had, but forget how far I’ve come with anxiety and stomach pain. It’s perfectly natural that I would be adjusting to my new dose of health, but I hope I will never forget the joy of walking to the letter box and feeling more than just a painful slump of body. I don’t want to forget, that’s the thing. I don’t want to be so preoccupied with today’s tired that I forget I’ve come from yesterday’s exhaustion.

Why would I want to forget the things which made taught me so much about people, and pain, and the fact that life is less about achievements and more about moments? Things got rather in focus when I was most sick, in a very sad, very hard sort of way. 

Found

At the same time, I don’t want to remember too much. You’re supposed to enjoy your honeymoon, aren’t you? And fondly remember the first house you lived in with your spouse. But I was so glad to have a fresh start when we moved from that first house. It didn’t hold happy memories. I never feel good when I visualise the house – the lounge reminds me of couch, and crying, and the bedroom reminds me of hours in the darkness. As for the honeymoon, the only good part about it was that I was with Ben 24/7, and the rest was a kind of deterioration nightmare {just because you are on a honeymoon doesn’t mean it will be very honeyish or romantic}. 

It’s not about getting depressed or reliving the hardest days of my {short} life, but putting things back in perspective. What a cliché! But really, try being really not well for a long period of time, giving up some big dreams, being a bit of a social outcast; that’s when you realise how caught up you were in the extras without even realising how precious the fundamentals are. Like, waking up and getting out of the house. 

And because I’m supposed to wake up and get out of the house tomorrow, I will close here with the mental reminder that if I manage it, I will celebrate it.

 

needing a hole in the ground

I woke up at 9.30 am, next to my dog, who had taken my man’s side of the bed. Today was my day off the gym, and I felt very much inclined to take it easy and embrace relaxation and healing. I decided right then and there that I was going to have a pyjama day. It was the first pyjama day I’d had in months and months. I leisurely spent my morning sewing, writing an email and ignoring the piles of dishes, clothes on the floor and general household chaos. Goodness, I’m good at not doing housework now.

3.00 pm arrived and I felt that great bodily weariness which often surrounds me at this time of day. It didn’t seem wise to push through it considering I’m meant to be look after my health post-move. I decided to snuggle up on the couch for an hour’s recuperation. 

3.24 pm. My eyes are flung open by the distinct sound of people coming up the drive. The first thought that flashes into my mind is, “It’s the Jehovah Witnesses.”

But almost instantly this thought is replaced with another, more accurate, more terrifying one.

“No it’s not. IT’S FRIDAY AFTERNOON, AND THIS IS THE AGENT COME TO SHOW PEOPLE THROUGH THE HOUSE. Craaaaaap.” 

My heart is suddenly pumping like a mad thing, and I feel all shaky and weak and gushing with something they call adrenalin. I am standing up now, in my pink dressing gown, with my overly excited Wolfgang barking like crazy. They are just approaching the porch.

I am not meant to be in the house at all, neither is Wolfgang, and the house is not fit to be seen, and I’m in pyjamas and....

I open the door before the real estate agent gets a chance to unlock it with her keys.

“I am soo sorry! I completely forgot. Can you just give me two minutes?” I say in a manufactured- calm voice, as I just peak my head out of the door in the hopes that she won’t see my pink dressing gown.

She graciously grants my request, and I close the front door as I run full pace into my bedroom, skidding along the wooden floors. The bedroom floor is covered, as always, in my clothes. I tear off my pyjamas and dash on my track pants. I start wildly picking up my clothes and stuffing them under the doona, armful at a time. What can I do, when there is no cupboard to jam them in? It looks so she-just-hid-her-clothes-in-the-bed, so lumpy, so obvious.

The sewing room...well, I just hope with all of me they don’t walk in there, because they will come out with sewing pins stuck in their feet.

I run outside to where Wolfgang is, and in my sweetest voice I coax him into putting on his leash. Then I skid back to the front door, wondering how long my re-dressing and bed-stuffing took. I’m pretty sure it can’t have been more than half a second.  

I open the door again. This time I have opened the door a lot wider as I’m not trying to hide my dressing gown. I glance down with embarrassment to see the cords of my track pants hanging out, just a little reminder of my panicked dressing. I apologise again with genuine I’m-so-sorry tones in my voice, and tell her that I haven’t been well so it quite slipped my mind. She replies that ‘there has been a lot of that going round’ and I gladly take this illusion to my having a virus. Four year virus, what of it.

After all this turmoil she says that the potential buyers have just looked at the backyard and it’s not what they were hoping for. They don’t want to look through the house after all. I close the door.

I’m still flowing with nervous energy. I’m quivering inside, and feeling a big looming dose of anxiety coming my way. I also feel some escalating self-hatred for forgetting an appointment. And then I look at my chalkboard, which this week says, 

“Grace for the things that matter.”

It’s something that I have been thinking about a lot lately. It never works when I say to myself, “It doesn’t matter, don’t worry about it!” Because, all of me disagrees. All of me says, “It does matter!” 

Picture source

What I’m learning is that I cannot be perfect. I can’t remember perfectly, or be the perfect wife, or the perfect host, or flautist, or friend, or writer...and that is ok, because there is grace and understanding, from God, from me, and often from others too. Life is important, and flute, and relationships, and the house, and my arrangements with the real estate agent are important. It’s a lie to say they’re not. But there is grace. So even though they do matter, I don’t have to feel anxious when they don’t go quite right.

There is grace for the things that matter. 

And so I applied some grace to myself, and got over it all faster than I have ever gotten over an embarrassing mistake before. 

punching bags and therapy

I haven’t seen my psychiatrist for a month.

Please understand that this is a really really long time. I miss the lump-in-the-throat rants about things great and small with my unshockable, poker faced shrink. He is a wise old owl. “What’s been on your mind?” he unfailingly asks every week, and I begin to blabber on about anything from carpet stains to the uncomfortably intimate, all in his full confidence. He doesn’t laugh at anything I say, he never blinks an eyelid.

But not only have I been counselling free since just before I left Melbourne, I have also been mood-altering medication free. Right now, I am living life as raw, unrestrained Danielle Skye. I’m sure you can appreciate the difficulties. 

This equation of no medication + no counselling + new city + guests (curious? read this one too) = I needed to hit something by the end of the week. Really hard.  Repeatedly. 

As I’ve said before, when I get anxious, I nearly explode. Implode. Whichever. It’s a peculiar feeling. I tell my husband that I need to punch something. To which he always replies, “You can punch me.” To which I always say, “ No, I don’t want to hurt you.” (And then he privately thinks, “you couldn’t even if you tried.”) On particularly desperate occasions when I have declined his kind offers, the dining room table has suffered, from a rather irrational woman.

picture source

 It would be ideal if I could just run to my psychiatrist every time I was losing it, for he has the most rationalising effect on me. Calmly, firmly, he reminds me that yes, I can say no to people, that yes, I can set boundaries to let myself cope, to recover my health, to foster the stability of my home.

He is now five hours away. Alas. 

I have discovered the most effective solution to this no shrink + no drugs + people issue.

 Bodycombat.

I would advertise this class as just as effective as anti depressants and excellent for sufferers of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). We need to get it into the DSM manual.

I was nervous before class. These classically trained arms of mine are on the slender side of things and people have bluntly told me that when I am punching something, I don’t look like I’m punching at all. I regret not tuning into the boxing on telly a little more. Shall I admit that my greatest fear was punching myself in the head? It has happened before, in a class. Once I start hurling my twiggy arms around pretty much anything could happen.

Well, I had a ball. I had a wild, ugly, monster kind of a good time. The brutality of the class had me in unstoppable giggles. It was utterly vulgar and rough, and the contrast to my years of ballet training was deliciously stark. Sometimes we were punching men; I assume they were potential assaulters of the opposite sex? “C’MON, make the blood trickle”, yelled out our ‘inspiring’ instructor. I sometimes made Mr. Foe my Trichotillomania or GAD. I put my disorders in a lot of pain. My favourite move, apart from the high ninja kicks, was one where we walked along like beasts, wielding a club from above our heads to the monster we were sleighing on the ground. We were staggering along in a line, swinging wildly, like massive hairy Vikings on a bloody hunt.

 It was violent and uncivilized and I was delighted. Next we ran into a circle and apparently captured some other fiend. There was nothing pretty or polite about this class of middle class girls in designer gym gear. We screamed “YEAH” as we kicked our air opponents you-know-where. I let it all out, all those perfectionist, people-pleasing horrors, which make it so tough for me to care for my body. I served them an almighty blow, and goodness I felt good at the end of class.

A great deal of mental stability came about without me hurting my table, punching my husband, seeing my psych, popping a pill or having a sob. 

Will I be back? 

Yes, for sure.

Oops I mean, HELL YEAH.